March 18, 2025 • 59 mins
Kel sits down with sex therapist, Tara O, to unpack why her libido has disappeared - and whether it’s ever coming back. Raw, unfiltered confessions meet expert advice as Kel shares things she’s NEVER told anyone. No pressure, no judgment - just an honest chat about what happens when you simply don’t want sex.
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HOSTS & PRODUCERS
Kelly McCarren @kelly_mccarren
Kee Reece Searles @keereece
AUDIO PRODUCTION
Madeline Joannou - Mylk Media
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land we're recording
on today.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I've done a couple of energy healing sessions that it's
breath work in Bali, and I always end up sobbing,
per like wailing sobbing, and She'll be yelling at me
like as I'm doing my breath like, She's.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Like, keep going, keep going, keep going, while I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Like, hello, welcome back, shitters, this is eat sleeve shit
repeat your wildly unhinged podcast about the madness that is
motherhood and everything in between, and thank you for letting
me well.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
No one had a choice, including Keene producer mads Have.
Last week off I simply was just peek overwhelmed. I
was hosting some panels for a FABWD event. We're in
the middle of the U Beauty Awards. I'm obviously trying
to look after everything assr. And that's on top of
just like my regular workload. See, you know, there was
(01:05):
just no episode last week. I went to the GP
a few weeks ago because my noggin was injured.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
In it ball. That's the story for another day.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
She no joke was like, your head is fine physically,
it will be sore for a while, but it's okay.
I would like to discuss your mental health though, because
I don't know. I must have just been releasing some
extra unhinged vibes or something. Anyway, I did the standard
mental health checklist thing, and I was like slay because
I barely registered for being depressed.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And then she said, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
She did say, ma'am, You've got the highest possible score
for stress and anxiety, so you know, not great. And
you know what, I know that our guest today is
going to tell me that orgasmine would be a good
stress reliever. And all I shall say to that is,
Dear God, no, please do not put anything else on
my to do list, which you know pisses Luke right
(01:55):
off because then he feels.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Like a chore.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Tara Oh is a sex coach and has been working
with women reigniting their desire for over ten years. Instead
of just interviewing Tara today, I'm actually going to have
a live sex therapy session, which I'm guessing is going
to be mortifying to share. But as I said to her,
if I've learned one thing from my history of oversharing,
(02:20):
it's that no experience is unique, so sharing really does
help people feel less alone. Tara, could you please start
off by telling us a little bit about yourself, what
you do, how did you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Start doing it?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And you are a mom to two as well, so
you're a mom, so it is they're going to be
glad that you're not like some twenty two year old
going just have our sex.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Okay, Well you need to do is just buy more
lingerie and schedule it in.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Schedule it in, go to honey, go to spend five
hundred dollars on some lingerie.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
God, it's expensive these days, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I don't think I've ever bought lingerie in my entire
life because I just refuse.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Yeah yeah, I mean you can get some really cute
stuff from bing W. By the way, I was in
there the other day trying to buy some more I
think some very unattractive period nickers, and I was like,
what is that red lace little thing there? For two dollars?
I will take that.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Big W for the win.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Big they were in for the win. But about me?
So I am Tara, I've been a sex coach for
over a decade now. I am also a mother of two.
Very intents we could go with intense big personality, a
lot of energy kids. I wouldn't have it any other way,
but it's a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I always say I'd rather than be intense and boring.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
My kids are definitely not.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, they're going to be boring adults and they're not
going to be dudged people. They've got big personalities.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
They have they have. I've been married for well, we've
been together for about thirteen years, married for seven, so
deep in the trenches of navigating parenthood, relationship, our sex, live,
our intimacy. The thing that lights me up the most
is working with other mothers and women who feel like
they've lost desire or spark or intimacy in their relationship,
(04:09):
who might feel like they're a little bit broken or
something that you know is wrong with them or wrong
with their relationship. So I hold workshops around Australia called
Great Sex Matters. I have online courses, so I kind
of cover quite a few topics, but mostly my highest
selling course is called Sex after Kids, which is all
(04:30):
about sort of unfucking your sex life after kids, because
it you know, it's hard out there, so this course
really walks you through the pathway of how you can
kind of reignite that desire. I've written a book called
The Better Sex Project, which is all about my journey
from my early twenties to where I got to now,
including after having kids and thinking I was just going
to be this sex goddess after kids. And I was
(04:52):
a bit of a dickhead for thinking that, I admit.
So it was a very nice kind of come down
to earth moment for me. I had a really bad
prolapse and lost a lot of pleasure and just didn't
want to be touched and all of those kind of things. So,
knowing what I know and being able to bring my
kind of my expertise into a realm that I know
so well, maybe a little bit too well, I just
(05:14):
wanted to bring the kind of sex coaching that women
need and want in this kind of season of their life.
And that's that, no bullshit, no fluff. We can have
a laugh, we can have a talk. We don't want
to get into this kind of really stagnant sterile therapy type,
high stress environment because I think mums have got enough
going on. I think that we need actionable tips that
(05:37):
are sustainable. We don't need to be told that we'll
just have more sex, just schedule it. In because there's
a lot of stuff behind the scenes that's going on,
and I think it helps when you've got somebody telling
you go, yeah, I fucking get it. I get how
hard it is. And sometimes you look at your husband
you want to smash them in the head with a
fry pan and put the kids in the rubbish bin.
But we need to kind of do a little tweaking
here and there. So yeah, that's kind of me, that's
(05:59):
kind of my vibe.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And you've got a lot of workshops coming up, so
I'll make sure that we link that in the show
notes because I've I reckon after today's session, people are
either going to go away and have happy humping or
they'll be like, I need to check myself in.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I need to check myself in. Well, the workshop is again,
it's a really good fun girls night out. You can
have some bubbles, you bring your girls. There are zucchinis
or carrots involved. Because I give a little demonstration of
a ligam massage which will blow your pastner's mind. It's
a linam massage, so it's kind of Lingam is sort
of the time trick name for penis. It's called the
(06:35):
wand of Light. Darling, which sounds ridiculous, but believe me,
it's a very fun night. And what it does is
it just gives you more tools to make sex interesting
because I don't know about you, but sex can get
really fucking boring after a while. When you've been humping
the same guy for a long time, there's not a
lot of newness. So in order to bring back newness
and curiosity and exploration, I give you ways to do
(06:57):
that in the workshop, and also how to increase your
own so you take it from those tiny little micro
orgasms or that really fast two second sparks, like really big,
full body What the fuck just happened? Blew my mind?
I'm now on a different level. Can we do that
again in about three weeks time? You know? So it
makes sense. That's much interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
You just like also made me feel so much better though,
because you just said three weeks time, because it's like
people that say a couple of times a week. I'm like, how, guys,
for some people, that's so great and so realistic. Because
I also wanted to ask you because whenever we read anything,
we will always see, like you know, good sex is
(07:38):
part of a good relationship, and I have one girlfriend
out of all of my girlfriends, who is having good,
regular sex most nights of the week, she's a psychopath.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I think she's.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
She's got a kid under one, but most nights because
they almost days, like and they'll actually do it a
few times. Apart from that, like everyone's kind of like
every month or every couple of months. But the thing
is as well, is that out of all of my friends,
most of them have really happy relationships without having sex.
So I just want to ask your perspective on that,
(08:16):
because we're often told that we can't have a happy
relationship without sex.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
I mean, that's completely untrue because, like yourself, I know
people that will be intimate together once a month and
they've got a beautiful relationship. I know people that will
have sex very frequently, but their relationship is troubled. The
frequency of sex doesn't tell us anything really about relationship
satisfaction or sexual satisfaction. Because also, you can be having
(08:42):
a lot of sex and it can be unrewarding, or
you're doing it for them, or you're doing it out
of obligation, or you're doing it with some other kind
of belief or from a trauma pattern. But you could
also be having sex every two weeks or every three weeks,
and it's really connected sex and it brings you guys
into a really beautiful union, and it's fun and it's playful,
and that kind of sustains you for the next two
(09:03):
weeks or the next three weeks. So whenever we look
at frequency, I mean your friend who has sex quite often,
that's amazing and if it's.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Worth and they are very happy as well, by the way,
that's it.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, that is, and it is really important to point
out that that it's very one size doesn't fit all exactly. Yeah,
you have to kind of co create the kind of
sexual relationship that works for both of you in the
relationship and find compromise and find a balance so that
one person really wants it all the time and then
one person doesn't want it all the time. That can
be a really kind of a bit of a struggle.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Well that's the position that I'm in.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
So do you want to tell me a little bit
about where you are with intimacy with your partner? And
first off, you've got.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
A child, Yes, yes, we have little Lennie. He's three
years old. He's hilarious. So I thought i'd just start
by telling you a little bit about my past because
I think that as well. Like a lot of people,
if they didn't regularly listen to the show, or if
someone just met me, they would be like, she is
an absolute wild cat, and I'm not. I'm very open
(10:01):
about talking about anything. And I don't know, I guess
I just come across as like I've got big fake titties,
So I probably just come across as like really hyper sexual.
But I genuinely, and I'm saying to this honestly to you,
if you told me you never have to be touched
or have sex ever again in your entire life, I
would be like, oh my god, Thank Heavens, I do
(10:23):
not want to be touched.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So when I was thinking about, you know, sharing in.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
This episode, I was like, oh god, I'm really going
to have to probably share like more of my past.
And I realized, like, I've never been comfortable sexually. Sex
has always been a little bit more performative for me.
So when you were talking about the technique that you
like to show in your workshop, I'm sure that i'd
probably have something like that down pat if it's about
(10:50):
pleasuring a man, because I'm very good at doing that
and very good at performing. And I have never, I realized,
had good sex so because I cannot release the inhibitions
or whatnot. And I've had three very long term relationships,
and I'd say I've probably orgasmed in my life with
(11:11):
a partner maybe twenty to thirty times. And that's a
long time, almost two decades. Oh my god, I'm getting
on of very regular sex because I've had long term
boyfriends and when I wasn't, I was quite happy to
you know, I always was having little flings and such.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Well, first off, thank you for sharing that, because it
can feel really vulnerable and scary because other people, you know,
you worry about what people think, and everybody can when
they have got this kind of image of you and
things to break. That is really, you know, really really brave.
And I bet that there are a lot of women
that resonate with that, right because our generation, in particular,
(11:52):
we grew up with sex being a performance. We were
told by the magazines how to have twenty orgasms while
standing on your head in the shower, or how to
pleasure a man. It was always about what we give
to them, that our sexuality was something we traded. We
traded it for a nice dinner. We traded it for love,
we traded it for a text back, we traded it
for a promotion sometimes if that be the case. But
(12:14):
we were very much told and sold this idea that
our sexuality didn't belong to us. It was a trading hard.
It was something that we did in order to get
something outside of ourselves in return. So it makes a
lot of sense that you would feel like that your
sexuality isn't your own. Yeah, And even if you think
about sex, the way that we learn how to have sex,
(12:36):
it can be from movies, it can be from porn.
We basically get an understanding of our own sexuality and
our own pleasure and what sex looks like by the
very people that's job it is to pretend. So we're
learning from people who are pretending already. So we never
really as women, get a very We don't get the
(12:57):
opportunity to form a really authentic sexuality, knowing what we like,
knowing what we don't like, knowing what we need, want, desire,
knowing that we deserve all of those things. We are
not educated in the way that a lot of teens
and young adults are educated now. They're given a much
more rounded, holistic view, much more empowerment, much more liberation
(13:20):
around it. Yes, we had empowerment growing up, but it
was always you can go and fuck like a man, right,
And for a lot of women, fucking like a man
isn't actually doing anything for them. You know, we don't
want to rush in their hot and heavy and get
the shit banged out of us somethings. Yeah, we need
different a different way. So it doesn't shock me that
(13:41):
you haven't learnt what really is Kelly's true sexuality, What
does she need in order to feel safe, Because what
I'm hearing is if you're drinking, if you're feeling like
you can't let go, that's a safety thing. You don't trust.
You don't trust that it's safe to be in your body.
You don't trust that it's safe to be sexual. Or
maybe there's been trauma in the past. Maybe there's been
(14:03):
and that can range from anything from severe sexual trauma
to like a slap on the bum going on the
bus when you didn't want it, or comments, hey big tits,
blah blah blah blah, you know all of that stuff
that makes you go, oh god, that's scary, that's invasive.
I'm going to shut that part of myself and I'm
going to stuff it right down below so no one
can can touch it and I don't have to feel it.
So that safety and allowing yourself to really come into
(14:27):
pleasure is important because without safety, we can't trust, and
without trust, there's no connection, no connection to your body,
no connection to your partner, and then without connection, you
won't be able to surrender, surrender to pleasure, surrender to orgasm,
surrender to having those kind of experiences that would make
sex worthwhile. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Like why would I want to do it on the
rag when it's like, oh my god, it's just literally
another thing to put on my to do list because
I don't get anything out of it. What you just
said makes so much sense because my husband literally would
do anything to make me feel as safe as possible,
and I know how to get pleasure, like if I'm
(15:09):
by myself, I have no problem orgasmine. I've got no problem,
Like I can get there in under a minute, like
it's no dramas.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Yeah, So, just going back to when you were saying
that you feel like sex is a chore, like something
to do on your to do list. What is it
about sex that makes it feel like a chore for you?
Is it because it's coming the initiation and the invitation
for sex is coming from your husband.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I think it's just like it's a job that I
will be doing that I don't get anything out of
except for getting him off my back for twenty four hours.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Because the sex doesn't feel super rewarding.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Oh god, it's not rewarding at all.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
No, yeah, okay, And so that again makes complete sense.
No wonder. It feels like a chore and an obligation
because we very rarely move towards something we don't like.
You know, I hate tomatoes. For example, I'm not going
to go into my kitchen right now pick up a tomato.
But if my husband's like, please eat this tomato, please,
and you're like, oh fuck it, he's really in tomatoes.
And then you take a bite it and you go, okay,
I'm eating it for you. But let's just say, instead
(16:13):
of making me or me feeling like I have to
eat that tomato, if my husband took that tomato and
he chopped it all up and he drizzled bousamic all
over it, and he put mint on it, or basil
and a nice piece of sourdough that was fresh out
of the oven. You can guarantee I'm going to eat
that thing like no tomorrow. Yeah, I would devour it.
(16:34):
It's the same thing, it's just presented and created differently.
It's using different flavors, it's using different ingredients. So I
wonder that if sex felt rewarding, if it felt pleasurable,
if you've got to the end of an encounter, sexual experience,
encounter with your husband and was like, that felt so good,
my body feels alive, I feel or maybe you cry
(16:57):
and you release some of this kind of grief intension
that you're holding in your body because it's been so
long that you felt safe enough to kind of go
down into that depth of your body and your soul.
Whether sex like that would feel more enticing if there
was no pressure, there was no obligation, it was just
simply something that brought you, guys, pleasure, joy, connection, playfulness,
(17:18):
release that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Definitely, Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
But then I'm like, I don't know how to because
like everything that he wants to do, like I just
I don't even want to be touched. Everything's just like, oh,
I've got real and I know that I do. I've
got like real intimacy problems. It's only getting worse as
I'm getting older. And I hate that I've turned into
the mum that never wants to have sex, you know,
like it's just such a cliche. I hate that I've
(17:45):
turned into that person.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Yeah, they're not wanting to be touched, though. I think
is really really common because it's sort of the same
kind of thing when women say I'm too tired for sex, right,
So there's being that kind of too tired for sex,
and then there's feeling overwhelmed. Now when you say that
your partner when he touches you, you don't want to
be touched. Is it because you're feeling in your body
(18:08):
overwhelmed by what's happened during the day, or that you're
overwhelmed by what's going on in your mind? Or is
it something that if somebody else, if Chris Hemsworth walked
in and started stroking, would you still have that kind
of inner battle? Well, I admitted this on a different
episode and Luke heard it and was like what.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And I was like, I've got to be honest about this.
But I was like, oh, I reckon.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I could totally have like loose sex with a stranger
in a hotel room because that person doesn't know anything
about me. They have got no idea about my moods,
and I don't argue with that person about rubbish or
they don't know what I do for work, like absolutely nothing. However,
to get really intimate and like let someone like kiss
(18:54):
my body or something, I'd still have to be inebriated
to really let it happen and not be grown stout. Yeah,
because I've just gotten to a stage where any intimate
act is just like ough. And do you know why
does it feel like it's a transgression on your space?
Does it feel like it sends you into a bit
of a flighty response, like a flea or a fight
(19:18):
or flight kind of nervous system response. Yeah, like a
I freeze up and I'm like, I don't know it,
just like I haven't let my husband go down on
me for like since before I was pregnant, because I'm
just like, oh my god, yuck, like yuk, yuk, yuck, yuck,
chuck it just the whole thing. I'm just like ill, no,
please don't.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I used to.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Of course I would enjoy it, but I was always
like weird about it. I was like, I need a
pillow over my face. I can't like music needs to
be up very loud. It's like I've just got this
block where as soon as something's really intimate, I can't
let it go. Like I would rather have sex from
behind so that I don't have to look at anyone.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And I've just always been like that.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's funny because sex is so intimate.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yes, letting like another body into your body or join
your body, you know, however you do it.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
But the problem is that to have really good sex,
there has to be intimacy, and that intimacy is born
from connection, which is trust and which is safety. So
if you're already not feeling safe in your body, it
makes a lot of sense that you don't want to
move any further towards intimacy because you don't feel safe enough,
and that feeling of unsafety and not trusting and feeling
(20:34):
it it's your brain. Your brain will stop any kind
of desire before it can even flow through you. Yeah,
So if there is a touch on your hand or
a touch on your shoulder that your brain then determines
as unsafe oh, it's going to lead to sex. I
don't want to have sex. Now, I'm spinning. Now, I'm
going into like overwhelmed with all of these thoughts. My
(20:56):
body feels repulsed. Your brain will do a very quick
calculation and decide that sex and pleasure isn't worth it
right now, and that it's actually unsafe to you. So
it will cock block any type of pleasure or any
kind of nice sensation that you would be able to
kind of harness as you move forward with the encounter.
(21:16):
So when your partner does come and initiate, is it
normally your partner initiating.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yes, I'll sometimes be like, do you want to have sex?
Because I'll be like, it's been a few weeks, we
better do it. Very unsexy.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
The way that I initiate, Well, really, I mean you
had me at the well, do you want to have sex?
I'll be right over.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And I'm like, ill, no, no, just come on, get hard,
come on, come on, let's get it on with like
come on, and then I'll be like doing everything I
can to get it over and done with as.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Quick as possible, as quick as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Very sexy. I am Oh, I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
You would be surprised at how common it is. Honestly,
we might raise our eyebrows and think, oh, that's that's
never me, but we've all done it. We've all faked
an orgasm to spur the other person on, or you
know that hand is reached over and you've gone, oh god, okay, fine,
you know, throwing the bone. So I'm not saying that
it has to be a perfect kind of scorecard moving
forward and things that you can always still have encounters
(22:19):
that you're not you know, one hundred percent into, especially
when you're in a married and healthy relationship. We just
we do it right. But if we always have sexual
encounters that are for avoidance reasons, like it's been a
couple of weeks and maybe you're avoiding an argument, or
maybe you're avoiding relationship drift or avoiding something else, or
(22:40):
you're feeling bad about yourself that you're not a good partner.
If you're continuously saying yes but really deep down it's
a no, then that's going to erode your desire and
your pleasure even more so, it's going to make it
even harder to access that kind of pleasure and that
desire because you're not even trusting your own no. Yeah,
(23:00):
really it's a no. But your brain is going, ah,
well I should, I should, come on, come on, do it,
and your body's like, but hang on. We've been telling
you we don't feel safe, we don't like this, and
you're overriding it. Yeah. So I think the first thing
that I would do in your sort of particular case,
we need to reset the whole sexual cycle. We need
to get rid of the pressure, the obligation, the chore.
(23:22):
We need to wipe the slate clean and go moving forward.
I'm going to create a new sex life with my
partner and with myself, one that has the foundation on safety, trust, connection, honesty, authenticity,
and that really centers my emotional state, my needs, my desires,
(23:44):
and my wants. And in order to do that, it's
about having a conversation with your partner. And when you
were saying, Luke would do anything to make you feel comfortable,
right like, I like to think that we have good
men in our lives. And yeah, they can be total
shit back sometimes and not read the room and all
of that stuff. They're not, you know, as great as women, obviously,
(24:06):
but they're pretty amazing, especially when you can feel that
sensitivity and that appreciation of like what do you need?
Like what can I can I help you with? When
it comes to your sex life, they're pretty clueless as
well when it comes to a female sexuality, almost as
much as you know, we're pretty clueless as well. I
(24:26):
mean they're more clueless, but we're also pretty clueless when
it comes to our lives. So when it comes to
two people trying to move forward, you don't really know
what to do because it's like, well, what other kind
of sex can we do? What should we do? How
should we talk about this? How should we navigate it?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And I don't know if this is how other people
would feel, but it almost makes me feel like really
embarrassed and shy, like oh, which sounds ridiculous, but it's
like like I just would get straight away just very
awkward and embarrassed about such a thing, like oh goodness,
oh goodness me.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I know. And it's exactly again. It can be from
our culture, can be how we were raised, It could
be religion, it can be from anything. But you know
a lot of us were told don't touch your vagina
or you know it'll close up on you or something
or that's dirty, and hide your body, hide your vagina
or you know, everything from oh it's smelly, because there's
so many ads about how you can make it more
(25:20):
beautiful and smell stuff. So again, it's that kind of
hangover from the way that we grew up and what
we learned about our own bodies and our sexuality. We
weren't told they're amazing pleasure vessels, and this is you know,
you can advocate for your own pleasure. Now it's getting better,
like I was saying, but not then. So having a
conversation with Luke about hey, I like to start with
(25:40):
like I feel, I want, I wonder as kind of
a framework, because again, sexual conversations can be really tricky.
They're hard for everybody, especially when you are wanting to
make change. Yeah, because most of us talk about sex
when something's wrong. We don't often sit there and go, hey,
do you remember that time we're on that beat each
and you know, things got pretty saucy between us or
(26:04):
whatever whatever happened. We don't often recount those kind of
stories to us. So when we have conversations, they're laiden
with sort of embarrassment and expectation and vulnerability because we're
bringing something to the table and we haven't been practicing
these kind of conversations, so it's hard, right, But it
sounds like Luke's a great guy, so we can kind
(26:24):
of be confident that he's going to receive this in
a really good manner. And I think it's about talking
to him and saying something like, you know what I've
been thinking about our connection. I feel like I might
be ready to take some steps to make sex something
that is a place where we can find lots of
pleasure and fun and connection. And I want to be
(26:47):
able to feel like I can look forward to it
or that I you know, not meaning that we have
to have sex all the time, but I want to
feel excited by my own body and my own pleasure
and connecting with you and building sex life that feels
good as we age, you know, when Lenny leaves the
home and we're still, you know, going to bingo or something,
(27:07):
I want to know that I can hold your hand
and we're connected in this way. And then you would
probably say something like, so you've done the I feel
the I want, And then the I wonder is the
invitation to say so, I wonder if you would be
willing on doing a thirty day no sex reseet, which
means that Luke wouldn't be able to initiate anything. He
(27:32):
can initiate conversations, sure, but you'll be the one initiating
any physical contact. You'll be the one initiating sex. Not
in the first two weeks, You'll be the one sort
of initiating any initiation, if that makes sense. So what
we're doing in this experiment is we're removing the pressure
that a any touch is now going to lead to
(27:55):
more intimacy or sex or interaction that doesn't feel safe
for you. We're setting expectations so that Luke knows that actually,
you're doing this because you value the relationship and this
side of your relationship and you want to create something
that feels good and rewarding for both of you that
you have like a commitment there. And what it's doing
(28:16):
is it's giving you the opportunity that in those thirty
days you're able to start doing little experiments with yourself
in a way that feels unhurried, but nobody's watching. You
can feel and find ways to reconnect to yourself that
feel safe for you. Do you know why Luke reaches
(28:37):
for you, why he wants to engage and have intimacy
with you in sex.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
For him, it's how he feels connected.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Yeah, And I think that's really important to know and
listen to our partners share what it is that they
receive from it, because if it was just about getting off,
of course, they can go to the bathroom and they
can bang one out. You know, they could do that
morning and night. Of course, pleasure is always a component,
but there's always another reason, yeah, like an emotional reason
(29:06):
and need the drives reaching out for that person and
being like I want to feel that validation. I want
to feel connected to you. I want to know that
you're as into me as you know I am into you.
And that's where it can trip up a lot of
people because if somebody's saying no, but the other person's like,
but I'm trying to connect, it can expiral into a
lot of arguments and a lot of resentment, rough and
(29:28):
resentment and tricky territory to navigate. It's basically usually the
couple wants the same thing, connection or validation, but just
in different ways, like love languages. You know, we've got
different ways we've given and receive love. If they're coming
for connection, but you actually just go to sex because
you know you want to feel good about who you
are as a partner. You're not doing it for anything else,
(29:50):
You're doing it for avoidance reader reasons. You know you've
got mismatch needs and wants out of sex. So knowing
that Luke's need, his underlying need and why he comes
to you for sexist connection, finding ways that we can
up that connection with Luke, but not frequency of sex.
We're looking like, if he had a connection tank, how
(30:12):
can we deposit more connection in his tank? So that's
filling up, but it's not penetrative sex. It's not even
really highly intimate touch on your body. So starting to
brainstorm and think of ideas, which might be maybe he
just wants to sit next to you at the end
of the day and hold hands while you're watching a
show or a movie but your bodies are next to
(30:34):
each other, yeah, you know, and you're having a glass
of wine. Or maybe he wants to connect with you
without any phones or screens or anything in bed and
you actually put your phones down and say maybe you
text him during the day and say, can we just
have a chat in bed tonight. We'll go to bed
five minutes early or something. You put your phone down.
And when he sees that, it's a shift, a conscious
choice to put your phone down. And I know it
(30:56):
sounds ridiculous, but it's a true rebellion these days, you
know we have it's also much distraction.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, I'd be showing him that I'm putting an effort,
putting in an effort.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah, exactly. The weight of the effort is gold basically
because it's like, if you know, even with things that
our partner does, especially in the early days, it's like
he planned the dates and it was it wasn't the
Italian that I wanted it, but it was the next
best thing. You know, it's the effort. We've got it,
and as we stay in a relationship, the longer we
forget that the effort is a very clear indication of
(31:29):
the wanting and the desire to keep a relationship healthy
and thriving. Yeah. So with Luke seeing you put that
phone down, actually sitting together in bed or lying together
in bed, you can either. Also I recommend a lot
of couples actually just taking their clothes off and they
inbed naked to each other or cuddling if it feels comfortable,
(31:49):
because again, that's a high degree of intimacy, but it's
often a high level of intimacy that we reserve only
if it's then going to go into sex, or if
it's then going to mean that there's going to be
a hand that slips down and a fondle and a
grab and you're like, oh, so it's a very uncomfortable
place for a lot of women because there's a lot
of internal pressure, expectation, or a lot of mind stuff
(32:10):
going and going okay, where is this going. So if
you can set the ground rules and be like, okay,
I just want to lie with you naked. I just
want skin to skin contact. Remember how when you have
a baby, they always put you on the chest, and
they do that for a very particular reason. It's the oxytocin,
it's the bonding, it's the connection, it's all of those
yummy neurochemicals that kind of get ejaculated through our body.
(32:31):
Can do the same with your partner, just skin on skin,
And what's going to be really important for you is
that you're going to have to bring your nervous system
down a little bit by he will help you co
regulate that because obviously it's not a trigger for him.
So he's probably really enjoying this touch. Yeah, allow his
breathing to coregulate yours. So you're just breathing slowly, try
(32:55):
to kind of notice the skin touching his, the sheets,
feeling what you can sense, smell, taste, you know, all
of those things here, and then just ask him like,
how are you really and he'll tell you a little
bit and then go but yeah, really, and he'll tell
you a little bit more go yeah, and anything else
like really, and even just saying really, a couple of
(33:18):
times you start to kind of again un cover that
surface stuff. We go, oh, well, my day was a
little bit stressful, or oh, Lenny didn't eat any of
the dinner again, can you believe it? And then you go, yeah,
but really, yeah, I'm actually pretty tired, Like I've been
dealing with this all week, and I got to say,
like I'm feeling burnt out, okay, and anything else? Really, Yeah,
I think I'm taking it out on you. And I
(33:40):
am almost happy that I'm taking it out on you
because it's giving me direction.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
For my anger right now, giving me an outlet, giving.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Me an outlet. Yeah, So being able to ask questions
in this way, repeating them and it can be saying
really or tell me more about that or whatever it is,
but keep them open ended and then just listen and
giving again that really beautiful connection of talking and connecting.
But there's no sex. There's no penetrative sex. So when
(34:07):
Luke turns over and goes to sleep that night, his
connection cup is getting filled, you know. And whether he
wants to then go and relieve himself a pleasure, But
my guess would be that he's actually really fucking stoked
with that. Yeah, Yeah, And then I would start looking
at things and homework that you would do that would
kind of start to unravel some of these kind of
(34:30):
long held beliefs about who you are as a woman,
who you are as a mother, who you are as
a sexual woman. Where you've got a lot of those
beliefs and those messagings from then I would focus a
lot on those beliefs and aren't hooking yourself from them?
And they can also It's so fascinating, and I really
love working with the whole body because again, aroused when
(34:51):
desire starts with the brain. Right. So if we've got
a belief this is a big belief a lot of
women have around, well, he only wants sex, right, And
this is you would see in every kind of mum forum,
a lot of kind of thing. It's a very classic
trope that the man always wants the sex is always chasing.
And when I talk to women about this, I say, well,
first off, if it's no wonder that you actually don't
(35:13):
even really want to want sex, Because if you've got
that message in your mind that you know all they're
after for me is for sex, you know, I'm just there.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I say a piece of meat. I'm like, I'm not
a piece of meat.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I'm not a piece of meat. I'm not a t
bone steak.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I have an angers rump, I am aware, I am ray.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Yeah, I'm actually even inedible. Don't touch me.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Okay, you'll be poisoned, okay.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Mad cow, Mad cow. If you're thinking that that's all
that they want, or you're thinking that it's not going
to be rewarding anyway, sure I have more sex, but
why do I want more sex, Because it's not even
the sex that I even like. It's going to stop
your motivation for making change. Because our beliefs affect our thoughts,
and our thoughts affect our emotions, and our emotions will
affect how motivation to whether we're actually going to, you know,
(36:03):
put in any effort to do this in the first place. Yeah,
So we need to change these and make these positive beliefs.
So if a belief, say was he only ever wants sex,
that can be true. Of course that can be true.
And it could also be true that he's asking for
sex a lot because he thinks that one in twenty
times he asks, he's going to be able to get that.
A sales pitch, isn't it. It's like a sales pitch.
(36:24):
It's like, you know, I'm going to keep messaging you
until you say, actually, you know what, I do want
that essentral oil or something, and it's like, yeah, finally,
keep throwing something at the wall enough times, one of
the times that'll stick. Why is it going to stick?
Or I'm going to get so over it and be
like okay, fine, you know yeah, or and again that
is sex. But if we take it back to what
we're talking about with Luke, is it that he wants
(36:45):
that pleasure from you? Because I mean sex and a
vagina of course is really really great, but there are
a lot of other ways so he can get pleasure.
So what is it really okay? It's that connection, it's
that validation suck. He's felt so unattractive since also becoming
a parent, and he's wondering, do you still find me sexy?
Or does our relationship matter now that we've got, you know,
other small, tiny terrorists in the fray? Can I have
(37:08):
some of your time now, you know? Or where do
we fitness pitch? Are we going to make it through this?
Because I've got three friends that are divorcing right now
and I'm thinking, fuck, that's going to be us next yeah.
Or the man at work he was saying that his
wife like is so grossed out by him, and doesn't
you know blah blah blah blah is that us? You know?
So they've got their own internal dialogue and beliefs and
systems as well, So yes, it can feel like they're
(37:30):
chasing us for sex, but what's really going on under that.
The other thing I want to bring up as well
is that we often look at this kind of work
like it's dire and terrible, Like we think that there's
something going to be wrong with us, that's irreparable, that
will never actually be able to find the true nugget
of our sexuality, that will never be able to feel
(37:52):
that kind of sensual aliveness anymore, or that pleasure or
feeling really juicy in our body in a way that
feels real and powerful for us. And what I say
to women is that I've never met a woman that
doesn't have it in her. We are built like that.
You know, our clitoris has seven thousand nerve and its
We are built for pleasure. We are built to be
(38:14):
filled from the inside out with fullness and radiance and sensuality.
You know, it's how much you feel when you go
for a massage. Or we like to beautify ourselves. You know,
we rub things on our skin. We like sense, we
like smells, we like you know, beauty in and of itself.
We have a central nature and when we can tap
into that and move forward. There's not a woman out
(38:37):
there that doesn't have that capacity, or doesn't have the
capacity to feel pleasure, to feel desire, to feel like
she can turn herself on.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Do you have like tips for me and other people
that we know what we like and we know what
would make.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Us enjoy sex. But how do you get.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Past that mental block of not wanting to do it
in front of them?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
So I think it's it's shame and conditioning again, right,
It's that thing of being like perhaps you were told
as a teenager that if your quote unquote too sexual,
something bad's going to happen. You're going to invite abuse,
You're going to be called a slut, You're going to
be shamed. Right.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So I went to a religious school, so that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
I mean you might want to start there.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
No sex before marriage.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Of course, because it's shameful.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It's very shameful.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
It's dirty. And don't even think about touching your own body.
Oh now, it is the biggest sin. And do you want,
you know, the wrath of God on you. You can't shame
anybody more than that. So again it makes sense, right,
It makes sense that you would carry things of being like, yeah,
guilts kind of getting in the way of me actually
wanting to touch my body in front of you. What
(40:00):
it comes down to is if Lenny touched his body
in a way that felt nice for him, what would
you tell him. Would you say that's disgusting, don't do God?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
No, I just would say, hey, like I know that
that might maybe feels nice.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Maybe when we touch ourselves we do it in our bedrooms.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I went to a religious school, but my parents were
very they were very no sex before marriage. But I
remember when I was little they used to catch me
fondling myself sometimes and they were always very like, okay,
see y'all, like they wouldn't never like they never made
me feel guilty. Amazing, And do you think there would
have been other times as well as you were growing
(40:43):
up that you would have picked up messaging that has
made you kind of retract from your sexuality or see
it as something shameful, whether even you remember Cosmopolitan how
the sealed section was always sealed, Yeah, you know, even
little things like that was the fact that it wasn't
out there?
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Why was it sealed? Or this is something naughty, this
is something to boo, this is something that needs to
do we shouldn't be talking about, or that we shouldn't
be talking about. So there is also those things of
looking at of what are the key messagings around shame,
Where did it sort of start from the root of
the shame and is it serving you? Like what is
this holding this amount of shame in your body? How
(41:23):
is that impacting your ability to experience pleasure and intimacy
with your husband. Once you've picked the shame like out
and you're sort of taking it out of the garden
of your sexuality, for example, you've really got to couple
it with moving it through your body. Like that shame
that's in your body is trapped with things like contraction
and a sort of a denseness and an inability to
kind of relax the nervous system to open enough to
(41:46):
actually start to even receive any sensations or receive any
kind of intimacy itself. So what I would do, I
would start off with you because there's such an undercurrent
of not feeling safe and almost like I don't want
to say the word repulsion, but a distaste in your
own physicality or your own having physical touch on your body. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:07):
So we really will kind of want to go back
to treating your body like a newborn baby's body, you know,
and giving that that safety and really kind of swaddling
her and being like, Okay, we're going to start doing
somebody based practices and moving that shame and that greef
or that anger. Like, I bet you're fucking super pissed
about the amount of times people have commented on your
your boobs or times when somebody has made the wrong
(42:30):
assumption about you because you're a beautiful blonde woman, you know,
and maybe oh she or she's not smart, or hey,
baby doll or whatever it is, you know, so all
of those comments and that that kind of shame or
maybe that's a self protective thing that you're like, well,
I'm going to do this so that they don't see
the real me. So giving that a voice and a
space while also connecting to your body by breath and
(42:53):
by moving it through your body. So what I usually
like to do is, if you're doing it by yourself,
you can get like a beautiful massage oil, but something
that is not going to irritate your vulva or your vagina.
So coconut oil is really really good. And I would
set up and again an intentional space, because ritual and
(43:14):
intentionality also creates a sense of safety because we're telling
ourselves and our body, Okay, I'm doing this in a
safe environment because I'm closing the door, because I have
dimmed the lights, because I've got music on that's really
good for my nervous system and relaxing, so your body's
getting cuses. Okay, this is safe. We're not in the
middle of the park. We're Luke's not here, so he
(43:35):
can't see.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
He can't come in.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
He can't come in because I've double bolted the door
and put a mouse trap on the floor or a
rabbit trap. My dad actually did that once, he put
a rabbit trap in the hallway for when my boyfriend
stayed over.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Okay, your dad sounds like my dad, though it's not wild.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
And you wonder why we've all got these kind of
weird messagings about sex.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Exactly that we are so precious. There's literally like a
bear trap set up.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
There is a bear trap. You cross over there to
my precious angel.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Mery daughter bear trap exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
So look what I'm saying is you're not that shit crazy.
You're completely normal. Look what we grew up with. So
you've got your coach noddle, you've got beautiful space. And
what we want to do is we want to start
to create safety with our body. But while we're breathing,
and we're going to breathe in kind of a bit
of a sexual way, So you might start by sitting
like if you're on a bouncing ball, like when you're
giving birth, and your sort of legs are on the side.
(44:32):
You're basically just kind of kneeling up on your knees,
but then sitting back, if that makes sense. So your
legs are underneath you or save your cross legger, but
then you tuck your legs underneath you and you're sitting back.
You know the praying emoji guy. You're sort of sitting
there like this. I think he's yeah, he's got his
hands on his upper thighs and his legs underneath. Be
that man. So you hop into the emoji praying man.
(44:53):
This is where it's key. So we want some music
that's got some sensual nality to it. We're not listening
to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. We're not any
or any any jeez. Yeah, this is funny. On my playlist,
I've got some of my beautiful songs, but then just
a wiggle song will come out of the blue and
you're like, manto no, and I'm like, oh what, I
don't know. It's all of a sudden, I'm like, we
don't talk about Bruno.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
It's like massive attack.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
You're in the middle of like enjoying angel and then
in pops in Michael Finnigan did.
Speaker 4 (45:24):
Forget and that ship you can never get out of
your mind exactly, then ruins the mood straight away. So
you need a playlist that's not going to surprise you
with any kind of other songs. And you're going to
start to move your body. And all you do is
you're moving in like a wave motion. So you put
out your chest and you kind of stick out your
bum and then you would collapse your chest and sort
(45:44):
of move back and then out chest out, collapse your
chest kind of shoulders in as if you're kind of hunching.
You can actually do it in any kind of way.
All I want you to do is just move rhythmically
to the music and inhale an out how as you
breathe that in how and ex house so just like
you would the ocean, you know. And if you want
(46:05):
to go really in depth with that, you can hold
and release your pelvic floor muscles, squeeze and release like
you're doing a keegel. Right now.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You're massaging yourself at the same time.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
And you're massuging yourself, but you're just kind of focusing
on your upper body. So you've dripped some warm coconut
oil on your hands and you're doing like as if
you would be putting on lotion, but you're slowing everything down.
And what you're doing is you're using like feather light
touches and then kind of more compression touches, and you're
going across your chest, around your boobs, sort of up
(46:37):
your neck as you're breathing, and all you're doing is
you're just rocking breathing feeling. And then this is the
crucial part. I want you to start sounding. Now. This
can also feel like okay, we've gone from zero to
blow here, but it's a very effective way to start
to bring up some of that shame and that grief
from a bodily sense, yeah, from like a somatic sense,
(47:00):
so that ohh. And imagine as you're breathing out, you're
breathing like a black.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Cloud of like you're getting it out out all of
that shame, all.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
Of those comments that you've heard, that filth from the
trades on the side of the street, the shit you've seen,
the whatever it is, You're just breathing it out.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I've done a couple of like energy healing sessions that
it's breath work in Bali, and I always end up sobbing,
perfect like wailing sobbing, and she'll be yelling at me
like as I'm doing my breath like, she's like.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
While I'm like, the amount that our bodies can release
just through breathing is insane.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Yeah, exactly, it is. And it's so well researched. Now,
it's a very researched wellbeing hack. That was you know
how it started off with meditation and then and it
was breath work. What I guarantee will be next, it
will be sexual fitness, because it has been proven now
that our sexual fitness or our sexual wellbeing is a
(48:10):
quicker hack to overall well being than breath work, silocybin, magic,
mushrooms because there's a lot of trauma and use therapy
now with mushrooms, anything like that. It's been researched at
Harvard by a woman called Nicole Proust, and what she's
now doing is recommending women with anxiety depression stroke their
clitareress for fifteen minutes because what it's showing is that
(48:33):
women can re circuit their nervous system because it's all
so connected down into the vaginal canal and the polyvagel
theory and everything back to this up but it's showing
that it has better effects than medication, that it has
better and faster response time at lowering a woman's stress,
giving her a sense of well being, for creativity, vibrancy,
(48:56):
they've had women in an MRI machine where a brain
lights up in the exact area that it is for
what you would get if you had been meditating for
twenty four hours and you're having a mystical state, right,
So our bodies are wired for these experience. What we've
got to do is we've just got to clear the
muck to get there. So that breath and using that
sound for us to allow to tap into the good stuff.
(49:17):
We've got to unfortunately, clear out the pain before we
get the pleasure. You know, we've got to detoxify. If
you're starting a diet and you wanted to start like
having a better gut health or you want to start
eating properly, you've got to clean out that the candida
or the whatever it is. You want the old stuff out.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Then you want it to take the prebiotic to get
the good bacteria to get the good Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
Yeah, so this is your antibiotics basically, Yes.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Okay, the breath, breath is that it's an antibiotic.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
It's an antibiotic.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
This is what's going to love analogy, So that's great.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah, purifying, So this is how you're going to purify
your vessel in order to come back into more feeling
and more sensations. Yeah. So sometimes when you do this,
you will feel like you're purging a lot. There'll be
a lot of grief, or there'll be numbness. A lot
of the times, wimills I don't feel anything. It's like, yeah,
because we've numbed out so much of our feeling and
our capacity to tap into our body because we're too
(50:13):
busy doing stuff. We're too busy thinking, we're too busy
running around with a million things in our head. And
then all of a sudden we say, okay, pause, stop,
you know, like at the whizzard Freeze. Yeah, and now
I want you to Feelbody's like, fuck, we haven't felt
for the last four years, and now you want me
to drop into my body? What does that even mean?
So instead of using distractions and sort of anything that
we numb or anything like that, it's about retraining that
(50:34):
we can come back into our body but also feel
safe in the coming back of our body. Also, if
you get really in a jam, sound, it's going to
open up that super highway for emotions to come through,
for feelings. It's just a very good way of supercharging transformation.
So really loud and let it sound authentic, not like
ah oh, you want to be like oh from your
(50:57):
like you're giving birth.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, and I know what he's like when no one's
trying to.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Exactly nobody saying. And that's why they say having sex
is like giving birth, because if you're really in your pleasure,
if you're in your guts, if you're in the throes
of ecstasy, you don't care what you look like. You're
just being that wild, like guttural, unleashed version of yourself.
Then when you're finished, you want to close it. And
(51:23):
you'll know when you're finished, maybe the tears of coming
too much and you're like, okay, that's enough now, and
i feel like I've purged some blief. Now I'm going
to hold myself. So you wrap yourself in a blanket
and you lie down and you're like, it's safe, I've
got you, and you talk to yourself like you're a
little girl who's had a really bad nightmare or who's
been bullied at school by her own, you know, her
own peers, except it's your thoughts that are doing the.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Boy, it's yourself.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
It's yourself, it's you know, aren't we our greatest bully?
And then just really really hold yourself in that and
kind of allow again your nervous system to settle into
the recognition that you're okay in this body. So after
a couple of times of doing that, then I would
ty trate that with bringing pleasure back to the body
as well, because if your body has felt like a
(52:08):
source of resentment, or you're feeling annoyed by it, or
you're feeling knocked out of it, or it's not feeling
like how you want it to feel, you can form
like quite a bit of a not a nice relationship
with yourself. So we're coming in and coming back in
and be like, Okay, let's find some ways to bring
pleasure back into our system. And we do this a
(52:29):
couple of ways, like touch that feels nice to you.
So rather than grabbing a vibrator and chucking it on
your clip for like one minute or two minutes or
something and really just fast for that really purpose driven
orgasm and release, we're going to shift and see if
we can find pleasure that feels lazy and relaxed, and
pleasure that's we're not looking for a goal. We're not
(52:51):
going at it in a way that's you know, or
I need to get off. We're actually going in it
with a way of how can I go inwards? How
can I make pleasure feel good on my body? How
can what does my body even like? Do I like
my hair being pulled a little bit? Like? How do
I when I go for a massage and they pull
your hair back?
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Oh my god, it's my favorite part.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
So good. Right, So, sometimes if we're having trouble getting
into our body, harder sensations can be really good because
it overrides again our mental capacity, so it gives ourselves
that opportunity to go, oh wow, that's really kind of
taken me. So that the occasional pinch, the occasional squeeze,
the occasional flick or tweak or things like that can
be really good and exploring your whole body like that
(53:34):
and really kind of mapping it for going, oh fuck,
I didn't realize that I've never asked Luke to pull
my hair a little bitter. I've never asked him to
tickle my back as we're falling asleep, or I've never
asked him to. You know what, I just want a
foot massage, and I like a foot massage quite hard.
Little ways that you can explore touch in a way
that feels safe, but also that you can start to
(53:56):
build the blueprint of your own aerrogenous zones, of your
own way that you experience pleasure as a woman. Now
the old routine is out. We're resetting. We're doing the
thirty day reset, We're doing initiating connection more with Luke.
We are doing the exercises of connecting to your body
(54:17):
and physically removing that kind of that shame through your body,
letting yourself cry, letting yourself journal, starting to look at
the beliefs of why you feel so much shame. What
we told, what were your messages bringing things also that
really remind you that sexuality is something that gets to
be celebrated, that gets to be enjoyed, that it can
look like many different things, not just a man on
(54:41):
the top of a woman trying to get off. The
idea is not to rush it, not to make something
like okay, in this thirty days you're going to be healed,
you're going to actually want sex. You may start to
even just kind of shift. The only thing that happens
maybe the shift of like I'm thinking I might want
to want to work. I'm thinking I might want to
(55:02):
get the motivation to go a little bit further down
this track. Yeah, you can't rewrite all of those years
of conditioning and beliefs in thirty days, But what you
can do is start building a new sexuality and a
new sex life based on the blocks that truly matter
to you, like trust, safety, zero stress, no expectational pressure
(55:23):
around it, and at the moment, no one wanted touch
or touch that feels transgressive or unsafe. And you're building,
You're going to be building in and moving towards something
that feels really good for you, something that you actually
get to feel is pretty fucking amazing part of you
that you are really excited to develop and explore a
(55:48):
little bit more because that makes you feel really really good.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Everything you've just said that was so good, and it's
also all things that anyone listening at home can put
into practice as well, which I really love, Like I
think that, Yeah, the thirty days and then the naked humping,
the air.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
If you don't even want to hump, you could just
lie back and do it on your back and just
touch your body in ways that feel nice, and even
just the breathing into whats like some of us haven't
touched our bodies in weeks. Then you're in your pajamas,
and then you've got more people on your body. We
tend to if we're feeling overwhelmed and touched out, move
further and further away from it, so that nourishing touch
(56:34):
that we can receive from ourselves or from our partner
feels like a distant memory because it gets lumped in
all that same kind of being touched category. But actually
this touch is something different. This touch is supposed to
soothe that overwhelming, touched out feeling. So we're using touch
in a different way because we're allowing ourselves to self
heal and self soothe and reconnect. It's just also about
(56:57):
being really honest and truthfull about your capacity, how much
space you've got to allow that to take up in
your life at the moment. You know, we come through
different seasons where we've got so many balls in the
air that adding your sexuality piece can just make it
feel like you're going to drop all of them. We
don't want it to be a source of pressure for
months out there or stress. We want it to be
(57:19):
like when you get to that kind of that space
where you're getting a little bit more sleep, where your
partner and you are finding like you've kind of have
moments of connection. Whether that's at the moment you could
just be watching a show or you could be lying
in bed with phones, that's still the time still there.
You could just redirect the time, but knowing and owning
the capacity for which that you can devote to this
(57:41):
kind of stuff. But it is worth having a really
honest think and thinking, what is the kind of relationship
I want to have at the end of when the
kids are twelve, when the kids are thirteen, when the
kids are starting to go and have their own lives
and identities, what do I want to have to come
back to what's going to be there? And remembering that
it's through small steps that we take that can have
(58:03):
such big impacts. You know, even just filling up Luke's
connection cup and you'll have your own core kind of
need and value from him. Knowing what though those things
are that makes our partner feel loved makes them still
feel like they have a connection to sexually. And that's
not to say that you don't get to compromise and
be like no, no, no, no once every week is
(58:24):
too much for me. It's just I'm not there with
my energy. I'm not there with my attention. I think
we need to rejig this and go, okay, where can
we compromise and make our sex life something that suits
both of us.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
You've given us so much information. You've really like changed
my perspective the way that I look at different things,
so I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Oh You're so welcome, and we've got to remember that
we're looking for pleasure here, loving for enjoyment.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
I want saying alive, Okay, it's yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
We're just knowing what feels good in my body, you know,
or what could How can I get back into union
with with Luke and feel good? And I want that
spark we had because when we first started dating Fark
he was so hot and I want to feel that
kind of connection again because life is hard and I
want this to be you know, love and intimacy, enjoying it.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Well, thank you so much for listening to the pod.
Speaker 2 (59:17):
Today, and thank you so much to my gorgeous guest,
glorious gorgeous guest Tara.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
For joining me. She's probably walking away just like, Oh
my lord, that lady.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
I hope you've gotten something out of it, and it
might be presumptuous to say, but you might enjoy some
happy humping over the next couple of days.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
This episode was produced.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
By myself, Kelly McCarran, with audio production by Maddie Joanna
And hopefully I'll be back in your ears next week. Bye.
We acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land we're recording
on today.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I've done a couple of energy healing sessions that it's
breath work in Bali, and I always end up sobbing,
per like wailing sobbing, and She'll be yelling at me
like as I'm doing my breath like, She's.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Like, keep going, keep going, keep going, while I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Like, hello, welcome back, shitters, this is eat sleeve shit
repeat your wildly unhinged podcast about the madness that is
motherhood and everything in between, and thank you for letting
me well.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
No one had a choice, including Keene producer mads Have.
Last week off I simply was just peek overwhelmed. I
was hosting some panels for a FABWD event. We're in
the middle of the U Beauty Awards. I'm obviously trying
to look after everything assr. And that's on top of
just like my regular workload. See, you know, there was
(01:05):
just no episode last week. I went to the GP
a few weeks ago because my noggin was injured.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
In it ball. That's the story for another day.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
She no joke was like, your head is fine physically,
it will be sore for a while, but it's okay.
I would like to discuss your mental health though, because
I don't know. I must have just been releasing some
extra unhinged vibes or something. Anyway, I did the standard
mental health checklist thing, and I was like slay because
I barely registered for being depressed.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And then she said, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
She did say, ma'am, You've got the highest possible score
for stress and anxiety, so you know, not great. And
you know what, I know that our guest today is
going to tell me that orgasmine would be a good
stress reliever. And all I shall say to that is,
Dear God, no, please do not put anything else on
my to do list, which you know pisses Luke right
(01:55):
off because then he feels.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Like a chore.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Tara Oh is a sex coach and has been working
with women reigniting their desire for over ten years. Instead
of just interviewing Tara today, I'm actually going to have
a live sex therapy session, which I'm guessing is going
to be mortifying to share. But as I said to her,
if I've learned one thing from my history of oversharing,
(02:20):
it's that no experience is unique, so sharing really does
help people feel less alone. Tara, could you please start
off by telling us a little bit about yourself, what
you do, how did you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Start doing it?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And you are a mom to two as well, so
you're a mom, so it is they're going to be
glad that you're not like some twenty two year old
going just have our sex.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Okay, Well you need to do is just buy more
lingerie and schedule it in.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Schedule it in, go to honey, go to spend five
hundred dollars on some lingerie.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
God, it's expensive these days, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I don't think I've ever bought lingerie in my entire
life because I just refuse.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Yeah yeah, I mean you can get some really cute
stuff from bing W. By the way, I was in
there the other day trying to buy some more I
think some very unattractive period nickers, and I was like,
what is that red lace little thing there? For two dollars?
I will take that.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Big W for the win.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Big they were in for the win. But about me?
So I am Tara, I've been a sex coach for
over a decade now. I am also a mother of two.
Very intents we could go with intense big personality, a
lot of energy kids. I wouldn't have it any other way,
but it's a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I always say I'd rather than be intense and boring.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
My kids are definitely not.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, they're going to be boring adults and they're not
going to be dudged people. They've got big personalities.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
They have they have. I've been married for well, we've
been together for about thirteen years, married for seven, so
deep in the trenches of navigating parenthood, relationship, our sex, live,
our intimacy. The thing that lights me up the most
is working with other mothers and women who feel like
they've lost desire or spark or intimacy in their relationship,
(04:09):
who might feel like they're a little bit broken or
something that you know is wrong with them or wrong
with their relationship. So I hold workshops around Australia called
Great Sex Matters. I have online courses, so I kind
of cover quite a few topics, but mostly my highest
selling course is called Sex after Kids, which is all
(04:30):
about sort of unfucking your sex life after kids, because
it you know, it's hard out there, so this course
really walks you through the pathway of how you can
kind of reignite that desire. I've written a book called
The Better Sex Project, which is all about my journey
from my early twenties to where I got to now,
including after having kids and thinking I was just going
to be this sex goddess after kids. And I was
(04:52):
a bit of a dickhead for thinking that, I admit.
So it was a very nice kind of come down
to earth moment for me. I had a really bad
prolapse and lost a lot of pleasure and just didn't
want to be touched and all of those kind of things. So,
knowing what I know and being able to bring my
kind of my expertise into a realm that I know
so well, maybe a little bit too well, I just
(05:14):
wanted to bring the kind of sex coaching that women
need and want in this kind of season of their life.
And that's that, no bullshit, no fluff. We can have
a laugh, we can have a talk. We don't want
to get into this kind of really stagnant sterile therapy type,
high stress environment because I think mums have got enough
going on. I think that we need actionable tips that
(05:37):
are sustainable. We don't need to be told that we'll
just have more sex, just schedule it. In because there's
a lot of stuff behind the scenes that's going on,
and I think it helps when you've got somebody telling
you go, yeah, I fucking get it. I get how
hard it is. And sometimes you look at your husband
you want to smash them in the head with a
fry pan and put the kids in the rubbish bin.
But we need to kind of do a little tweaking
here and there. So yeah, that's kind of me, that's
(05:59):
kind of my vibe.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And you've got a lot of workshops coming up, so
I'll make sure that we link that in the show
notes because I've I reckon after today's session, people are
either going to go away and have happy humping or
they'll be like, I need to check myself in.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I need to check myself in. Well, the workshop is again,
it's a really good fun girls night out. You can
have some bubbles, you bring your girls. There are zucchinis
or carrots involved. Because I give a little demonstration of
a ligam massage which will blow your pastner's mind. It's
a linam massage, so it's kind of Lingam is sort
of the time trick name for penis. It's called the
(06:35):
wand of Light. Darling, which sounds ridiculous, but believe me,
it's a very fun night. And what it does is
it just gives you more tools to make sex interesting
because I don't know about you, but sex can get
really fucking boring after a while. When you've been humping
the same guy for a long time, there's not a
lot of newness. So in order to bring back newness
and curiosity and exploration, I give you ways to do
(06:57):
that in the workshop, and also how to increase your
own so you take it from those tiny little micro
orgasms or that really fast two second sparks, like really big,
full body What the fuck just happened? Blew my mind?
I'm now on a different level. Can we do that
again in about three weeks time? You know? So it
makes sense. That's much interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
You just like also made me feel so much better though,
because you just said three weeks time, because it's like
people that say a couple of times a week. I'm like, how, guys,
for some people, that's so great and so realistic. Because
I also wanted to ask you because whenever we read anything,
we will always see, like you know, good sex is
(07:38):
part of a good relationship, and I have one girlfriend
out of all of my girlfriends, who is having good,
regular sex most nights of the week, she's a psychopath.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I think she's.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
She's got a kid under one, but most nights because
they almost days, like and they'll actually do it a
few times. Apart from that, like everyone's kind of like
every month or every couple of months. But the thing
is as well, is that out of all of my friends,
most of them have really happy relationships without having sex.
So I just want to ask your perspective on that,
(08:16):
because we're often told that we can't have a happy
relationship without sex.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
I mean, that's completely untrue because, like yourself, I know
people that will be intimate together once a month and
they've got a beautiful relationship. I know people that will
have sex very frequently, but their relationship is troubled. The
frequency of sex doesn't tell us anything really about relationship
satisfaction or sexual satisfaction. Because also, you can be having
(08:42):
a lot of sex and it can be unrewarding, or
you're doing it for them, or you're doing it out
of obligation, or you're doing it with some other kind
of belief or from a trauma pattern. But you could
also be having sex every two weeks or every three weeks,
and it's really connected sex and it brings you guys
into a really beautiful union, and it's fun and it's playful,
and that kind of sustains you for the next two
(09:03):
weeks or the next three weeks. So whenever we look
at frequency, I mean your friend who has sex quite often,
that's amazing and if it's.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Worth and they are very happy as well, by the way,
that's it.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, that is, and it is really important to point
out that that it's very one size doesn't fit all exactly. Yeah,
you have to kind of co create the kind of
sexual relationship that works for both of you in the
relationship and find compromise and find a balance so that
one person really wants it all the time and then
one person doesn't want it all the time. That can
be a really kind of a bit of a struggle.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Well that's the position that I'm in.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
So do you want to tell me a little bit
about where you are with intimacy with your partner? And
first off, you've got.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
A child, Yes, yes, we have little Lennie. He's three
years old. He's hilarious. So I thought i'd just start
by telling you a little bit about my past because
I think that as well. Like a lot of people,
if they didn't regularly listen to the show, or if
someone just met me, they would be like, she is
an absolute wild cat, and I'm not. I'm very open
(10:01):
about talking about anything. And I don't know, I guess
I just come across as like I've got big fake titties,
So I probably just come across as like really hyper sexual.
But I genuinely, and I'm saying to this honestly to you,
if you told me you never have to be touched
or have sex ever again in your entire life, I
would be like, oh my god, Thank Heavens, I do
(10:23):
not want to be touched.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So when I was thinking about, you know, sharing in.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
This episode, I was like, oh god, I'm really going
to have to probably share like more of my past.
And I realized, like, I've never been comfortable sexually. Sex
has always been a little bit more performative for me.
So when you were talking about the technique that you
like to show in your workshop, I'm sure that i'd
probably have something like that down pat if it's about
(10:50):
pleasuring a man, because I'm very good at doing that
and very good at performing. And I have never, I realized,
had good sex so because I cannot release the inhibitions
or whatnot. And I've had three very long term relationships,
and I'd say I've probably orgasmed in my life with
(11:11):
a partner maybe twenty to thirty times. And that's a
long time, almost two decades. Oh my god, I'm getting
on of very regular sex because I've had long term
boyfriends and when I wasn't, I was quite happy to
you know, I always was having little flings and such.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Well, first off, thank you for sharing that, because it
can feel really vulnerable and scary because other people, you know,
you worry about what people think, and everybody can when
they have got this kind of image of you and
things to break. That is really, you know, really really brave.
And I bet that there are a lot of women
that resonate with that, right because our generation, in particular,
(11:52):
we grew up with sex being a performance. We were
told by the magazines how to have twenty orgasms while
standing on your head in the shower, or how to
pleasure a man. It was always about what we give
to them, that our sexuality was something we traded. We
traded it for a nice dinner. We traded it for love,
we traded it for a text back, we traded it
for a promotion sometimes if that be the case. But
(12:14):
we were very much told and sold this idea that
our sexuality didn't belong to us. It was a trading hard.
It was something that we did in order to get
something outside of ourselves in return. So it makes a
lot of sense that you would feel like that your
sexuality isn't your own. Yeah, And even if you think
about sex, the way that we learn how to have sex,
(12:36):
it can be from movies, it can be from porn.
We basically get an understanding of our own sexuality and
our own pleasure and what sex looks like by the
very people that's job it is to pretend. So we're
learning from people who are pretending already. So we never
really as women, get a very We don't get the
(12:57):
opportunity to form a really authentic sexuality, knowing what we like,
knowing what we don't like, knowing what we need, want, desire,
knowing that we deserve all of those things. We are
not educated in the way that a lot of teens
and young adults are educated now. They're given a much
more rounded, holistic view, much more empowerment, much more liberation
(13:20):
around it. Yes, we had empowerment growing up, but it
was always you can go and fuck like a man, right,
And for a lot of women, fucking like a man
isn't actually doing anything for them. You know, we don't
want to rush in their hot and heavy and get
the shit banged out of us somethings. Yeah, we need
different a different way. So it doesn't shock me that
(13:41):
you haven't learnt what really is Kelly's true sexuality, What
does she need in order to feel safe, Because what
I'm hearing is if you're drinking, if you're feeling like
you can't let go, that's a safety thing. You don't trust.
You don't trust that it's safe to be in your body.
You don't trust that it's safe to be sexual. Or
maybe there's been trauma in the past. Maybe there's been
(14:03):
and that can range from anything from severe sexual trauma
to like a slap on the bum going on the
bus when you didn't want it, or comments, hey big tits,
blah blah blah blah, you know all of that stuff
that makes you go, oh god, that's scary, that's invasive.
I'm going to shut that part of myself and I'm
going to stuff it right down below so no one
can can touch it and I don't have to feel it.
So that safety and allowing yourself to really come into
(14:27):
pleasure is important because without safety, we can't trust, and
without trust, there's no connection, no connection to your body,
no connection to your partner, and then without connection, you
won't be able to surrender, surrender to pleasure, surrender to orgasm,
surrender to having those kind of experiences that would make
sex worthwhile. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Like why would I want to do it on the
rag when it's like, oh my god, it's just literally
another thing to put on my to do list because
I don't get anything out of it. What you just
said makes so much sense because my husband literally would
do anything to make me feel as safe as possible,
and I know how to get pleasure, like if I'm
(15:09):
by myself, I have no problem orgasmine. I've got no problem,
Like I can get there in under a minute, like
it's no dramas.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Yeah, So, just going back to when you were saying
that you feel like sex is a chore, like something
to do on your to do list. What is it
about sex that makes it feel like a chore for you?
Is it because it's coming the initiation and the invitation
for sex is coming from your husband.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I think it's just like it's a job that I
will be doing that I don't get anything out of
except for getting him off my back for twenty four hours.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Because the sex doesn't feel super rewarding.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Oh god, it's not rewarding at all.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
No, yeah, okay, And so that again makes complete sense.
No wonder. It feels like a chore and an obligation
because we very rarely move towards something we don't like.
You know, I hate tomatoes. For example, I'm not going
to go into my kitchen right now pick up a tomato.
But if my husband's like, please eat this tomato, please,
and you're like, oh fuck it, he's really in tomatoes.
And then you take a bite it and you go, okay,
I'm eating it for you. But let's just say, instead
(16:13):
of making me or me feeling like I have to
eat that tomato, if my husband took that tomato and
he chopped it all up and he drizzled bousamic all
over it, and he put mint on it, or basil
and a nice piece of sourdough that was fresh out
of the oven. You can guarantee I'm going to eat
that thing like no tomorrow. Yeah, I would devour it.
(16:34):
It's the same thing, it's just presented and created differently.
It's using different flavors, it's using different ingredients. So I
wonder that if sex felt rewarding, if it felt pleasurable,
if you've got to the end of an encounter, sexual experience,
encounter with your husband and was like, that felt so good,
my body feels alive, I feel or maybe you cry
(16:57):
and you release some of this kind of grief intension
that you're holding in your body because it's been so
long that you felt safe enough to kind of go
down into that depth of your body and your soul.
Whether sex like that would feel more enticing if there
was no pressure, there was no obligation, it was just
simply something that brought you, guys, pleasure, joy, connection, playfulness,
(17:18):
release that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Definitely, Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
But then I'm like, I don't know how to because
like everything that he wants to do, like I just
I don't even want to be touched. Everything's just like, oh,
I've got real and I know that I do. I've
got like real intimacy problems. It's only getting worse as
I'm getting older. And I hate that I've turned into
the mum that never wants to have sex, you know,
like it's just such a cliche. I hate that I've
(17:45):
turned into that person.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Yeah, they're not wanting to be touched, though. I think
is really really common because it's sort of the same
kind of thing when women say I'm too tired for sex, right,
So there's being that kind of too tired for sex,
and then there's feeling overwhelmed. Now when you say that
your partner when he touches you, you don't want to
be touched. Is it because you're feeling in your body
(18:08):
overwhelmed by what's happened during the day, or that you're
overwhelmed by what's going on in your mind? Or is
it something that if somebody else, if Chris Hemsworth walked
in and started stroking, would you still have that kind
of inner battle? Well, I admitted this on a different
episode and Luke heard it and was like what.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And I was like, I've got to be honest about this.
But I was like, oh, I reckon.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I could totally have like loose sex with a stranger
in a hotel room because that person doesn't know anything
about me. They have got no idea about my moods,
and I don't argue with that person about rubbish or
they don't know what I do for work, like absolutely nothing. However,
to get really intimate and like let someone like kiss
(18:54):
my body or something, I'd still have to be inebriated
to really let it happen and not be grown stout. Yeah,
because I've just gotten to a stage where any intimate
act is just like ough. And do you know why
does it feel like it's a transgression on your space?
Does it feel like it sends you into a bit
of a flighty response, like a flea or a fight
(19:18):
or flight kind of nervous system response. Yeah, like a
I freeze up and I'm like, I don't know it,
just like I haven't let my husband go down on
me for like since before I was pregnant, because I'm
just like, oh my god, yuck, like yuk, yuk, yuck, yuck,
chuck it just the whole thing. I'm just like ill, no,
please don't.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I used to.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Of course I would enjoy it, but I was always
like weird about it. I was like, I need a
pillow over my face. I can't like music needs to
be up very loud. It's like I've just got this
block where as soon as something's really intimate, I can't
let it go. Like I would rather have sex from
behind so that I don't have to look at anyone.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And I've just always been like that.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's funny because sex is so intimate.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yes, letting like another body into your body or join
your body, you know, however you do it.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
But the problem is that to have really good sex,
there has to be intimacy, and that intimacy is born
from connection, which is trust and which is safety. So
if you're already not feeling safe in your body, it
makes a lot of sense that you don't want to
move any further towards intimacy because you don't feel safe enough,
and that feeling of unsafety and not trusting and feeling
(20:34):
it it's your brain. Your brain will stop any kind
of desire before it can even flow through you. Yeah,
So if there is a touch on your hand or
a touch on your shoulder that your brain then determines
as unsafe oh, it's going to lead to sex. I
don't want to have sex. Now, I'm spinning. Now, I'm
going into like overwhelmed with all of these thoughts. My
(20:56):
body feels repulsed. Your brain will do a very quick
calculation and decide that sex and pleasure isn't worth it
right now, and that it's actually unsafe to you. So
it will cock block any type of pleasure or any
kind of nice sensation that you would be able to
kind of harness as you move forward with the encounter.
(21:16):
So when your partner does come and initiate, is it
normally your partner initiating.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yes, I'll sometimes be like, do you want to have sex?
Because I'll be like, it's been a few weeks, we
better do it. Very unsexy.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
The way that I initiate, Well, really, I mean you
had me at the well, do you want to have sex?
I'll be right over.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And I'm like, ill, no, no, just come on, get hard,
come on, come on, let's get it on with like
come on, and then I'll be like doing everything I
can to get it over and done with as.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Quick as possible, as quick as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Very sexy. I am Oh, I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
You would be surprised at how common it is. Honestly,
we might raise our eyebrows and think, oh, that's that's
never me, but we've all done it. We've all faked
an orgasm to spur the other person on, or you
know that hand is reached over and you've gone, oh god, okay, fine,
you know, throwing the bone. So I'm not saying that
it has to be a perfect kind of scorecard moving
forward and things that you can always still have encounters
(22:19):
that you're not you know, one hundred percent into, especially
when you're in a married and healthy relationship. We just
we do it right. But if we always have sexual
encounters that are for avoidance reasons, like it's been a
couple of weeks and maybe you're avoiding an argument, or
maybe you're avoiding relationship drift or avoiding something else, or
(22:40):
you're feeling bad about yourself that you're not a good partner.
If you're continuously saying yes but really deep down it's
a no, then that's going to erode your desire and
your pleasure even more so, it's going to make it
even harder to access that kind of pleasure and that
desire because you're not even trusting your own no. Yeah,
(23:00):
really it's a no. But your brain is going, ah,
well I should, I should, come on, come on, do it,
and your body's like, but hang on. We've been telling
you we don't feel safe, we don't like this, and
you're overriding it. Yeah. So I think the first thing
that I would do in your sort of particular case,
we need to reset the whole sexual cycle. We need
to get rid of the pressure, the obligation, the chore.
(23:22):
We need to wipe the slate clean and go moving forward.
I'm going to create a new sex life with my
partner and with myself, one that has the foundation on safety, trust, connection, honesty, authenticity,
and that really centers my emotional state, my needs, my desires,
(23:44):
and my wants. And in order to do that, it's
about having a conversation with your partner. And when you
were saying, Luke would do anything to make you feel comfortable,
right like, I like to think that we have good
men in our lives. And yeah, they can be total
shit back sometimes and not read the room and all
of that stuff. They're not, you know, as great as women, obviously,
(24:06):
but they're pretty amazing, especially when you can feel that
sensitivity and that appreciation of like what do you need?
Like what can I can I help you with? When
it comes to your sex life, they're pretty clueless as
well when it comes to a female sexuality, almost as
much as you know, we're pretty clueless as well. I
(24:26):
mean they're more clueless, but we're also pretty clueless when
it comes to our lives. So when it comes to
two people trying to move forward, you don't really know
what to do because it's like, well, what other kind
of sex can we do? What should we do? How
should we talk about this? How should we navigate it?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And I don't know if this is how other people
would feel, but it almost makes me feel like really
embarrassed and shy, like oh, which sounds ridiculous, but it's
like like I just would get straight away just very
awkward and embarrassed about such a thing, like oh goodness,
oh goodness me.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I know. And it's exactly again. It can be from
our culture, can be how we were raised, It could
be religion, it can be from anything. But you know
a lot of us were told don't touch your vagina
or you know it'll close up on you or something
or that's dirty, and hide your body, hide your vagina
or you know, everything from oh it's smelly, because there's
so many ads about how you can make it more
(25:20):
beautiful and smell stuff. So again, it's that kind of
hangover from the way that we grew up and what
we learned about our own bodies and our sexuality. We
weren't told they're amazing pleasure vessels, and this is you know,
you can advocate for your own pleasure. Now it's getting better,
like I was saying, but not then. So having a
conversation with Luke about hey, I like to start with
(25:40):
like I feel, I want, I wonder as kind of
a framework, because again, sexual conversations can be really tricky.
They're hard for everybody, especially when you are wanting to
make change. Yeah, because most of us talk about sex
when something's wrong. We don't often sit there and go, hey,
do you remember that time we're on that beat each
and you know, things got pretty saucy between us or
(26:04):
whatever whatever happened. We don't often recount those kind of
stories to us. So when we have conversations, they're laiden
with sort of embarrassment and expectation and vulnerability because we're
bringing something to the table and we haven't been practicing
these kind of conversations, so it's hard, right, But it
sounds like Luke's a great guy, so we can kind
(26:24):
of be confident that he's going to receive this in
a really good manner. And I think it's about talking
to him and saying something like, you know what I've
been thinking about our connection. I feel like I might
be ready to take some steps to make sex something
that is a place where we can find lots of
pleasure and fun and connection. And I want to be
(26:47):
able to feel like I can look forward to it
or that I you know, not meaning that we have
to have sex all the time, but I want to
feel excited by my own body and my own pleasure
and connecting with you and building sex life that feels
good as we age, you know, when Lenny leaves the
home and we're still, you know, going to bingo or something,
(27:07):
I want to know that I can hold your hand
and we're connected in this way. And then you would
probably say something like, so you've done the I feel
the I want, And then the I wonder is the
invitation to say so, I wonder if you would be
willing on doing a thirty day no sex reseet, which
means that Luke wouldn't be able to initiate anything. He
(27:32):
can initiate conversations, sure, but you'll be the one initiating
any physical contact. You'll be the one initiating sex. Not
in the first two weeks, You'll be the one sort
of initiating any initiation, if that makes sense. So what
we're doing in this experiment is we're removing the pressure
that a any touch is now going to lead to
(27:55):
more intimacy or sex or interaction that doesn't feel safe
for you. We're setting expectations so that Luke knows that actually,
you're doing this because you value the relationship and this
side of your relationship and you want to create something
that feels good and rewarding for both of you that
you have like a commitment there. And what it's doing
(28:16):
is it's giving you the opportunity that in those thirty
days you're able to start doing little experiments with yourself
in a way that feels unhurried, but nobody's watching. You
can feel and find ways to reconnect to yourself that
feel safe for you. Do you know why Luke reaches
(28:37):
for you, why he wants to engage and have intimacy
with you in sex.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
For him, it's how he feels connected.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Yeah, And I think that's really important to know and
listen to our partners share what it is that they
receive from it, because if it was just about getting off,
of course, they can go to the bathroom and they
can bang one out. You know, they could do that
morning and night. Of course, pleasure is always a component,
but there's always another reason, yeah, like an emotional reason
(29:06):
and need the drives reaching out for that person and
being like I want to feel that validation. I want
to feel connected to you. I want to know that
you're as into me as you know I am into you.
And that's where it can trip up a lot of
people because if somebody's saying no, but the other person's like,
but I'm trying to connect, it can expiral into a
lot of arguments and a lot of resentment, rough and
(29:28):
resentment and tricky territory to navigate. It's basically usually the
couple wants the same thing, connection or validation, but just
in different ways, like love languages. You know, we've got
different ways we've given and receive love. If they're coming
for connection, but you actually just go to sex because
you know you want to feel good about who you
are as a partner. You're not doing it for anything else,
(29:50):
You're doing it for avoidance reader reasons. You know you've
got mismatch needs and wants out of sex. So knowing
that Luke's need, his underlying need and why he comes
to you for sexist connection, finding ways that we can
up that connection with Luke, but not frequency of sex.
We're looking like, if he had a connection tank, how
(30:12):
can we deposit more connection in his tank? So that's
filling up, but it's not penetrative sex. It's not even
really highly intimate touch on your body. So starting to
brainstorm and think of ideas, which might be maybe he
just wants to sit next to you at the end
of the day and hold hands while you're watching a
show or a movie but your bodies are next to
(30:34):
each other, yeah, you know, and you're having a glass
of wine. Or maybe he wants to connect with you
without any phones or screens or anything in bed and
you actually put your phones down and say maybe you
text him during the day and say, can we just
have a chat in bed tonight. We'll go to bed
five minutes early or something. You put your phone down.
And when he sees that, it's a shift, a conscious
choice to put your phone down. And I know it
(30:56):
sounds ridiculous, but it's a true rebellion these days, you
know we have it's also much distraction.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, I'd be showing him that I'm putting an effort,
putting in an effort.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah, exactly. The weight of the effort is gold basically
because it's like, if you know, even with things that
our partner does, especially in the early days, it's like
he planned the dates and it was it wasn't the
Italian that I wanted it, but it was the next
best thing. You know, it's the effort. We've got it,
and as we stay in a relationship, the longer we
forget that the effort is a very clear indication of
(31:29):
the wanting and the desire to keep a relationship healthy
and thriving. Yeah. So with Luke seeing you put that
phone down, actually sitting together in bed or lying together
in bed, you can either. Also I recommend a lot
of couples actually just taking their clothes off and they
inbed naked to each other or cuddling if it feels comfortable,
(31:49):
because again, that's a high degree of intimacy, but it's
often a high level of intimacy that we reserve only
if it's then going to go into sex, or if
it's then going to mean that there's going to be
a hand that slips down and a fondle and a
grab and you're like, oh, so it's a very uncomfortable
place for a lot of women because there's a lot
of internal pressure, expectation, or a lot of mind stuff
(32:10):
going and going okay, where is this going. So if
you can set the ground rules and be like, okay,
I just want to lie with you naked. I just
want skin to skin contact. Remember how when you have
a baby, they always put you on the chest, and
they do that for a very particular reason. It's the oxytocin,
it's the bonding, it's the connection, it's all of those
yummy neurochemicals that kind of get ejaculated through our body.
(32:31):
Can do the same with your partner, just skin on skin,
And what's going to be really important for you is
that you're going to have to bring your nervous system
down a little bit by he will help you co
regulate that because obviously it's not a trigger for him.
So he's probably really enjoying this touch. Yeah, allow his
breathing to coregulate yours. So you're just breathing slowly, try
(32:55):
to kind of notice the skin touching his, the sheets,
feeling what you can sense, smell, taste, you know, all
of those things here, and then just ask him like,
how are you really and he'll tell you a little
bit and then go but yeah, really, and he'll tell
you a little bit more go yeah, and anything else
like really, and even just saying really, a couple of
(33:18):
times you start to kind of again un cover that
surface stuff. We go, oh, well, my day was a
little bit stressful, or oh, Lenny didn't eat any of
the dinner again, can you believe it? And then you go, yeah,
but really, yeah, I'm actually pretty tired, Like I've been
dealing with this all week, and I got to say,
like I'm feeling burnt out, okay, and anything else? Really, Yeah,
I think I'm taking it out on you. And I
(33:40):
am almost happy that I'm taking it out on you
because it's giving me direction.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
For my anger right now, giving me an outlet, giving.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Me an outlet. Yeah, So being able to ask questions
in this way, repeating them and it can be saying
really or tell me more about that or whatever it is,
but keep them open ended and then just listen and
giving again that really beautiful connection of talking and connecting.
But there's no sex. There's no penetrative sex. So when
(34:07):
Luke turns over and goes to sleep that night, his
connection cup is getting filled, you know. And whether he
wants to then go and relieve himself a pleasure, But
my guess would be that he's actually really fucking stoked
with that. Yeah, Yeah, And then I would start looking
at things and homework that you would do that would
kind of start to unravel some of these kind of
(34:30):
long held beliefs about who you are as a woman,
who you are as a mother, who you are as
a sexual woman. Where you've got a lot of those
beliefs and those messagings from then I would focus a
lot on those beliefs and aren't hooking yourself from them?
And they can also It's so fascinating, and I really
love working with the whole body because again, aroused when
(34:51):
desire starts with the brain. Right. So if we've got
a belief this is a big belief a lot of
women have around, well, he only wants sex, right, And
this is you would see in every kind of mum forum,
a lot of kind of thing. It's a very classic
trope that the man always wants the sex is always chasing.
And when I talk to women about this, I say, well,
first off, if it's no wonder that you actually don't
(35:13):
even really want to want sex, Because if you've got
that message in your mind that you know all they're
after for me is for sex, you know, I'm just there.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I say a piece of meat. I'm like, I'm not
a piece of meat.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I'm not a piece of meat. I'm not a t
bone steak.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I have an angers rump, I am aware, I am ray.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Yeah, I'm actually even inedible. Don't touch me.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Okay, you'll be poisoned, okay.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Mad cow, Mad cow. If you're thinking that that's all
that they want, or you're thinking that it's not going
to be rewarding anyway, sure I have more sex, but
why do I want more sex, Because it's not even
the sex that I even like. It's going to stop
your motivation for making change. Because our beliefs affect our thoughts,
and our thoughts affect our emotions, and our emotions will
affect how motivation to whether we're actually going to, you know,
(36:03):
put in any effort to do this in the first place. Yeah,
So we need to change these and make these positive beliefs.
So if a belief, say was he only ever wants sex,
that can be true. Of course that can be true.
And it could also be true that he's asking for
sex a lot because he thinks that one in twenty
times he asks, he's going to be able to get that.
A sales pitch, isn't it. It's like a sales pitch.
(36:24):
It's like, you know, I'm going to keep messaging you
until you say, actually, you know what, I do want
that essentral oil or something, and it's like, yeah, finally,
keep throwing something at the wall enough times, one of
the times that'll stick. Why is it going to stick?
Or I'm going to get so over it and be
like okay, fine, you know yeah, or and again that
is sex. But if we take it back to what
we're talking about with Luke, is it that he wants
(36:45):
that pleasure from you? Because I mean sex and a
vagina of course is really really great, but there are
a lot of other ways so he can get pleasure.
So what is it really okay? It's that connection, it's
that validation suck. He's felt so unattractive since also becoming
a parent, and he's wondering, do you still find me sexy?
Or does our relationship matter now that we've got, you know,
other small, tiny terrorists in the fray? Can I have
(37:08):
some of your time now, you know? Or where do
we fitness pitch? Are we going to make it through this?
Because I've got three friends that are divorcing right now
and I'm thinking, fuck, that's going to be us next yeah.
Or the man at work he was saying that his
wife like is so grossed out by him, and doesn't
you know blah blah blah blah is that us? You know?
So they've got their own internal dialogue and beliefs and
systems as well, So yes, it can feel like they're
(37:30):
chasing us for sex, but what's really going on under that.
The other thing I want to bring up as well
is that we often look at this kind of work
like it's dire and terrible, Like we think that there's
something going to be wrong with us, that's irreparable, that
will never actually be able to find the true nugget
of our sexuality, that will never be able to feel
(37:52):
that kind of sensual aliveness anymore, or that pleasure or
feeling really juicy in our body in a way that
feels real and powerful for us. And what I say
to women is that I've never met a woman that
doesn't have it in her. We are built like that.
You know, our clitoris has seven thousand nerve and its
We are built for pleasure. We are built to be
(38:14):
filled from the inside out with fullness and radiance and sensuality.
You know, it's how much you feel when you go
for a massage. Or we like to beautify ourselves. You know,
we rub things on our skin. We like sense, we
like smells, we like you know, beauty in and of itself.
We have a central nature and when we can tap
into that and move forward. There's not a woman out
(38:37):
there that doesn't have that capacity, or doesn't have the
capacity to feel pleasure, to feel desire, to feel like
she can turn herself on.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Do you have like tips for me and other people
that we know what we like and we know what
would make.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Us enjoy sex. But how do you get.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Past that mental block of not wanting to do it
in front of them?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
So I think it's it's shame and conditioning again, right,
It's that thing of being like perhaps you were told
as a teenager that if your quote unquote too sexual,
something bad's going to happen. You're going to invite abuse,
You're going to be called a slut, You're going to
be shamed. Right.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So I went to a religious school, so that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
I mean you might want to start there.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
No sex before marriage.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Of course, because it's shameful.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It's very shameful.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
It's dirty. And don't even think about touching your own body.
Oh now, it is the biggest sin. And do you want,
you know, the wrath of God on you. You can't shame
anybody more than that. So again it makes sense, right,
It makes sense that you would carry things of being like, yeah,
guilts kind of getting in the way of me actually
wanting to touch my body in front of you. What
(40:00):
it comes down to is if Lenny touched his body
in a way that felt nice for him, what would
you tell him. Would you say that's disgusting, don't do God?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
No, I just would say, hey, like I know that
that might maybe feels nice.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Maybe when we touch ourselves we do it in our bedrooms.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I went to a religious school, but my parents were
very they were very no sex before marriage. But I
remember when I was little they used to catch me
fondling myself sometimes and they were always very like, okay,
see y'all, like they wouldn't never like they never made
me feel guilty. Amazing, And do you think there would
have been other times as well as you were growing
(40:43):
up that you would have picked up messaging that has
made you kind of retract from your sexuality or see
it as something shameful, whether even you remember Cosmopolitan how
the sealed section was always sealed, Yeah, you know, even
little things like that was the fact that it wasn't
out there?
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Why was it sealed? Or this is something naughty, this
is something to boo, this is something that needs to
do we shouldn't be talking about, or that we shouldn't
be talking about. So there is also those things of
looking at of what are the key messagings around shame,
Where did it sort of start from the root of
the shame and is it serving you? Like what is
this holding this amount of shame in your body? How
(41:23):
is that impacting your ability to experience pleasure and intimacy
with your husband. Once you've picked the shame like out
and you're sort of taking it out of the garden
of your sexuality, for example, you've really got to couple
it with moving it through your body. Like that shame
that's in your body is trapped with things like contraction
and a sort of a denseness and an inability to
kind of relax the nervous system to open enough to
(41:46):
actually start to even receive any sensations or receive any
kind of intimacy itself. So what I would do, I
would start off with you because there's such an undercurrent
of not feeling safe and almost like I don't want
to say the word repulsion, but a distaste in your
own physicality or your own having physical touch on your body. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:07):
So we really will kind of want to go back
to treating your body like a newborn baby's body, you know,
and giving that that safety and really kind of swaddling
her and being like, Okay, we're going to start doing
somebody based practices and moving that shame and that greef
or that anger. Like, I bet you're fucking super pissed
about the amount of times people have commented on your
your boobs or times when somebody has made the wrong
(42:30):
assumption about you because you're a beautiful blonde woman, you know,
and maybe oh she or she's not smart, or hey,
baby doll or whatever it is, you know, so all
of those comments and that that kind of shame or
maybe that's a self protective thing that you're like, well,
I'm going to do this so that they don't see
the real me. So giving that a voice and a
space while also connecting to your body by breath and
(42:53):
by moving it through your body. So what I usually
like to do is, if you're doing it by yourself,
you can get like a beautiful massage oil, but something
that is not going to irritate your vulva or your vagina.
So coconut oil is really really good. And I would
set up and again an intentional space, because ritual and
(43:14):
intentionality also creates a sense of safety because we're telling
ourselves and our body, Okay, I'm doing this in a
safe environment because I'm closing the door, because I have
dimmed the lights, because I've got music on that's really
good for my nervous system and relaxing, so your body's
getting cuses. Okay, this is safe. We're not in the
middle of the park. We're Luke's not here, so he
(43:35):
can't see.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
He can't come in.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
He can't come in because I've double bolted the door
and put a mouse trap on the floor or a
rabbit trap. My dad actually did that once, he put
a rabbit trap in the hallway for when my boyfriend
stayed over.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Okay, your dad sounds like my dad, though it's not wild.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
And you wonder why we've all got these kind of
weird messagings about sex.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Exactly that we are so precious. There's literally like a
bear trap set up.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
There is a bear trap. You cross over there to
my precious angel.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Mery daughter bear trap exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
So look what I'm saying is you're not that shit crazy.
You're completely normal. Look what we grew up with. So
you've got your coach noddle, you've got beautiful space. And
what we want to do is we want to start
to create safety with our body. But while we're breathing,
and we're going to breathe in kind of a bit
of a sexual way, So you might start by sitting
like if you're on a bouncing ball, like when you're
giving birth, and your sort of legs are on the side.
(44:32):
You're basically just kind of kneeling up on your knees,
but then sitting back, if that makes sense. So your
legs are underneath you or save your cross legger, but
then you tuck your legs underneath you and you're sitting back.
You know the praying emoji guy. You're sort of sitting
there like this. I think he's yeah, he's got his
hands on his upper thighs and his legs underneath. Be
that man. So you hop into the emoji praying man.
(44:53):
This is where it's key. So we want some music
that's got some sensual nality to it. We're not listening
to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. We're not any
or any any jeez. Yeah, this is funny. On my playlist,
I've got some of my beautiful songs, but then just
a wiggle song will come out of the blue and
you're like, manto no, and I'm like, oh what, I
don't know. It's all of a sudden, I'm like, we
don't talk about Bruno.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
It's like massive attack.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
You're in the middle of like enjoying angel and then
in pops in Michael Finnigan did.
Speaker 4 (45:24):
Forget and that ship you can never get out of
your mind exactly, then ruins the mood straight away. So
you need a playlist that's not going to surprise you
with any kind of other songs. And you're going to
start to move your body. And all you do is
you're moving in like a wave motion. So you put
out your chest and you kind of stick out your
bum and then you would collapse your chest and sort
(45:44):
of move back and then out chest out, collapse your
chest kind of shoulders in as if you're kind of hunching.
You can actually do it in any kind of way.
All I want you to do is just move rhythmically
to the music and inhale an out how as you
breathe that in how and ex house so just like
you would the ocean, you know. And if you want
(46:05):
to go really in depth with that, you can hold
and release your pelvic floor muscles, squeeze and release like
you're doing a keegel. Right now.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You're massaging yourself at the same time.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
And you're massuging yourself, but you're just kind of focusing
on your upper body. So you've dripped some warm coconut
oil on your hands and you're doing like as if
you would be putting on lotion, but you're slowing everything down.
And what you're doing is you're using like feather light
touches and then kind of more compression touches, and you're
going across your chest, around your boobs, sort of up
(46:37):
your neck as you're breathing, and all you're doing is
you're just rocking breathing feeling. And then this is the
crucial part. I want you to start sounding. Now. This
can also feel like okay, we've gone from zero to
blow here, but it's a very effective way to start
to bring up some of that shame and that grief
from a bodily sense, yeah, from like a somatic sense,
(47:00):
so that ohh. And imagine as you're breathing out, you're
breathing like a black.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Cloud of like you're getting it out out all of
that shame, all.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
Of those comments that you've heard, that filth from the
trades on the side of the street, the shit you've seen,
the whatever it is, You're just breathing it out.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I've done a couple of like energy healing sessions that
it's breath work in Bali, and I always end up sobbing,
perfect like wailing sobbing, and she'll be yelling at me
like as I'm doing my breath like, she's like.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
While I'm like, the amount that our bodies can release
just through breathing is insane.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Yeah, exactly, it is. And it's so well researched. Now,
it's a very researched wellbeing hack. That was you know
how it started off with meditation and then and it
was breath work. What I guarantee will be next, it
will be sexual fitness, because it has been proven now
that our sexual fitness or our sexual wellbeing is a
(48:10):
quicker hack to overall well being than breath work, silocybin, magic,
mushrooms because there's a lot of trauma and use therapy
now with mushrooms, anything like that. It's been researched at
Harvard by a woman called Nicole Proust, and what she's
now doing is recommending women with anxiety depression stroke their
clitareress for fifteen minutes because what it's showing is that
(48:33):
women can re circuit their nervous system because it's all
so connected down into the vaginal canal and the polyvagel
theory and everything back to this up but it's showing
that it has better effects than medication, that it has
better and faster response time at lowering a woman's stress,
giving her a sense of well being, for creativity, vibrancy,
(48:56):
they've had women in an MRI machine where a brain
lights up in the exact area that it is for
what you would get if you had been meditating for
twenty four hours and you're having a mystical state, right,
So our bodies are wired for these experience. What we've
got to do is we've just got to clear the
muck to get there. So that breath and using that
sound for us to allow to tap into the good stuff.
(49:17):
We've got to unfortunately, clear out the pain before we
get the pleasure. You know, we've got to detoxify. If
you're starting a diet and you wanted to start like
having a better gut health or you want to start
eating properly, you've got to clean out that the candida
or the whatever it is. You want the old stuff out.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Then you want it to take the prebiotic to get
the good bacteria to get the good Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
Yeah, so this is your antibiotics basically, Yes.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Okay, the breath, breath is that it's an antibiotic.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
It's an antibiotic.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
This is what's going to love analogy, So that's great.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah, purifying, So this is how you're going to purify
your vessel in order to come back into more feeling
and more sensations. Yeah. So sometimes when you do this,
you will feel like you're purging a lot. There'll be
a lot of grief, or there'll be numbness. A lot
of the times, wimills I don't feel anything. It's like, yeah,
because we've numbed out so much of our feeling and
our capacity to tap into our body because we're too
(50:13):
busy doing stuff. We're too busy thinking, we're too busy
running around with a million things in our head. And
then all of a sudden we say, okay, pause, stop,
you know, like at the whizzard Freeze. Yeah, and now
I want you to Feelbody's like, fuck, we haven't felt
for the last four years, and now you want me
to drop into my body? What does that even mean?
So instead of using distractions and sort of anything that
we numb or anything like that, it's about retraining that
(50:34):
we can come back into our body but also feel
safe in the coming back of our body. Also, if
you get really in a jam, sound, it's going to
open up that super highway for emotions to come through,
for feelings. It's just a very good way of supercharging transformation.
So really loud and let it sound authentic, not like
ah oh, you want to be like oh from your
(50:57):
like you're giving birth.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, and I know what he's like when no one's
trying to.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Exactly nobody saying. And that's why they say having sex
is like giving birth, because if you're really in your pleasure,
if you're in your guts, if you're in the throes
of ecstasy, you don't care what you look like. You're
just being that wild, like guttural, unleashed version of yourself.
Then when you're finished, you want to close it. And
(51:23):
you'll know when you're finished, maybe the tears of coming
too much and you're like, okay, that's enough now, and
i feel like I've purged some blief. Now I'm going
to hold myself. So you wrap yourself in a blanket
and you lie down and you're like, it's safe, I've
got you, and you talk to yourself like you're a
little girl who's had a really bad nightmare or who's
been bullied at school by her own, you know, her
own peers, except it's your thoughts that are doing the.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Boy, it's yourself.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
It's yourself, it's you know, aren't we our greatest bully?
And then just really really hold yourself in that and
kind of allow again your nervous system to settle into
the recognition that you're okay in this body. So after
a couple of times of doing that, then I would
ty trate that with bringing pleasure back to the body
as well, because if your body has felt like a
(52:08):
source of resentment, or you're feeling annoyed by it, or
you're feeling knocked out of it, or it's not feeling
like how you want it to feel, you can form
like quite a bit of a not a nice relationship
with yourself. So we're coming in and coming back in
and be like, Okay, let's find some ways to bring
pleasure back into our system. And we do this a
(52:29):
couple of ways, like touch that feels nice to you.
So rather than grabbing a vibrator and chucking it on
your clip for like one minute or two minutes or
something and really just fast for that really purpose driven
orgasm and release, we're going to shift and see if
we can find pleasure that feels lazy and relaxed, and
pleasure that's we're not looking for a goal. We're not
(52:51):
going at it in a way that's you know, or
I need to get off. We're actually going in it
with a way of how can I go inwards? How
can I make pleasure feel good on my body? How
can what does my body even like? Do I like
my hair being pulled a little bit? Like? How do
I when I go for a massage and they pull
your hair back?
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Oh my god, it's my favorite part.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
So good. Right, So, sometimes if we're having trouble getting
into our body, harder sensations can be really good because
it overrides again our mental capacity, so it gives ourselves
that opportunity to go, oh wow, that's really kind of
taken me. So that the occasional pinch, the occasional squeeze,
the occasional flick or tweak or things like that can
be really good and exploring your whole body like that
(53:34):
and really kind of mapping it for going, oh fuck,
I didn't realize that I've never asked Luke to pull
my hair a little bitter. I've never asked him to
tickle my back as we're falling asleep, or I've never
asked him to. You know what, I just want a
foot massage, and I like a foot massage quite hard.
Little ways that you can explore touch in a way
that feels safe, but also that you can start to
(53:56):
build the blueprint of your own aerrogenous zones, of your
own way that you experience pleasure as a woman. Now
the old routine is out. We're resetting. We're doing the
thirty day reset, We're doing initiating connection more with Luke.
We are doing the exercises of connecting to your body
(54:17):
and physically removing that kind of that shame through your body,
letting yourself cry, letting yourself journal, starting to look at
the beliefs of why you feel so much shame. What
we told, what were your messages bringing things also that
really remind you that sexuality is something that gets to
be celebrated, that gets to be enjoyed, that it can
look like many different things, not just a man on
(54:41):
the top of a woman trying to get off. The
idea is not to rush it, not to make something
like okay, in this thirty days you're going to be healed,
you're going to actually want sex. You may start to
even just kind of shift. The only thing that happens
maybe the shift of like I'm thinking I might want
to want to work. I'm thinking I might want to
(55:02):
get the motivation to go a little bit further down
this track. Yeah, you can't rewrite all of those years
of conditioning and beliefs in thirty days, But what you
can do is start building a new sexuality and a
new sex life based on the blocks that truly matter
to you, like trust, safety, zero stress, no expectational pressure
(55:23):
around it, and at the moment, no one wanted touch
or touch that feels transgressive or unsafe. And you're building,
You're going to be building in and moving towards something
that feels really good for you, something that you actually
get to feel is pretty fucking amazing part of you
that you are really excited to develop and explore a
(55:48):
little bit more because that makes you feel really really good.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Everything you've just said that was so good, and it's
also all things that anyone listening at home can put
into practice as well, which I really love, Like I
think that, Yeah, the thirty days and then the naked humping,
the air.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
If you don't even want to hump, you could just
lie back and do it on your back and just
touch your body in ways that feel nice, and even
just the breathing into whats like some of us haven't
touched our bodies in weeks. Then you're in your pajamas,
and then you've got more people on your body. We
tend to if we're feeling overwhelmed and touched out, move
further and further away from it, so that nourishing touch
(56:34):
that we can receive from ourselves or from our partner
feels like a distant memory because it gets lumped in
all that same kind of being touched category. But actually
this touch is something different. This touch is supposed to
soothe that overwhelming, touched out feeling. So we're using touch
in a different way because we're allowing ourselves to self
heal and self soothe and reconnect. It's just also about
(56:57):
being really honest and truthfull about your capacity, how much
space you've got to allow that to take up in
your life at the moment. You know, we come through
different seasons where we've got so many balls in the
air that adding your sexuality piece can just make it
feel like you're going to drop all of them. We
don't want it to be a source of pressure for
months out there or stress. We want it to be
(57:19):
like when you get to that kind of that space
where you're getting a little bit more sleep, where your
partner and you are finding like you've kind of have
moments of connection. Whether that's at the moment you could
just be watching a show or you could be lying
in bed with phones, that's still the time still there.
You could just redirect the time, but knowing and owning
the capacity for which that you can devote to this
(57:41):
kind of stuff. But it is worth having a really
honest think and thinking, what is the kind of relationship
I want to have at the end of when the
kids are twelve, when the kids are thirteen, when the
kids are starting to go and have their own lives
and identities, what do I want to have to come
back to what's going to be there? And remembering that
it's through small steps that we take that can have
(58:03):
such big impacts. You know, even just filling up Luke's
connection cup and you'll have your own core kind of
need and value from him. Knowing what though those things
are that makes our partner feel loved makes them still
feel like they have a connection to sexually. And that's
not to say that you don't get to compromise and
be like no, no, no, no once every week is
(58:24):
too much for me. It's just I'm not there with
my energy. I'm not there with my attention. I think
we need to rejig this and go, okay, where can
we compromise and make our sex life something that suits
both of us.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
You've given us so much information. You've really like changed
my perspective the way that I look at different things,
so I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Oh You're so welcome, and we've got to remember that
we're looking for pleasure here, loving for enjoyment.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
I want saying alive, Okay, it's yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
We're just knowing what feels good in my body, you know,
or what could How can I get back into union
with with Luke and feel good? And I want that
spark we had because when we first started dating Fark
he was so hot and I want to feel that
kind of connection again because life is hard and I
want this to be you know, love and intimacy, enjoying it.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Well, thank you so much for listening to the pod.
Speaker 2 (59:17):
Today, and thank you so much to my gorgeous guest,
glorious gorgeous guest Tara.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
For joining me. She's probably walking away just like, Oh
my lord, that lady.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
I hope you've gotten something out of it, and it
might be presumptuous to say, but you might enjoy some
happy humping over the next couple of days.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
This episode was produced.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
By myself, Kelly McCarran, with audio production by Maddie Joanna
And hopefully I'll be back in your ears next week. Bye.
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